Jump to content
TSM Forums

Corey_Lazarus

Members
  • Content count

    6456
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Corey_Lazarus


  1. I'm beginning to really dig Disillusion.

     

    Also: FUCK ACARO. They're a band down the hall from us that we're all friends with (and their singer is ex-Burn In Silence, who were starting to gain popularity before splitting), and they opened for In Flames this past Saturday night.

     

    ...fuckers...


  2. General Interest Questions

     

    1. Who are you and what's your business here?

    I'm the L-A-fuckin'-Z, and I came here back when it was still TheSmarks thanks to the rants of that douche Scott Keith.

     

    2. When did you discover an interest in wrestling?

    Initially when I was probably 3 or so, but I really go into it when I was 11 in late 1997.

     

    3. The Company Line:

    A. Which companies have you actively followed in your tenure as a wrestling fan?

    World Wrestling Federation/Entertainment, World Championship Wrestling, Extreme Championship Wrestling, Xtreme Pro Wrestling, Total Nonstop Action, New England Championship Wrestling, Ring of Honor

    B. What have some of your favourite companies been? Your least favourite?

    The original ECW is, and always will be, my favorite company. There was just an air of excitement to it, even in its dying days, that is impossible to match nowadays, although RoH comes close (but without weekly TV it's hard to get into them, since I'm not rich enough to buy every DVD). Least has been WWE in 2002 and WCW in early 2000 (the Sullivan break from Russo).

    C. What is your favourite company right now? Any reason why?

    WWE Raw by default. I don't have enough money to buy RoH DVDs constantly, TNA has turned me off almost completely since halfway through 2004 except for small little spurts, I'm usually out Friday night so I don't watch WWE SmackDown, ECW is dead (and I refuse to watch that abomination known as WWECW), and NECW never does shows in SE Mass, or even the immediate MetroWest area, anymore.

     

    4. (Not So) Favourites:

    A. Who were your favourite wrestlers (or gimmicks) growing up / when you first started watching wrestling?

    "Rowdy" Roddy Piper and Jake "The Snake" Roberts were my favorites as a kid since they were my parents' favorites, but I still hold Piper in high regard. When I got really into it in 1997, I took a quick liking to Steve Austin, Mankind, The Undertaker, Degeneration X, Raven, Perry Saturn, Chris Benoit, Chris Jericho, and Dean Malenko.

    B. Who were some guys you couldn't stand?

    Hulk Hogan, Rocky Maivia (I didn't really like The Rock until late 2000, actually), most of the nWo, and the bulk of the WWF undercard.

    C. Who are your current favourites (if applicable / different from A.)

    CM Punk, Edge, Chris Jericho, Chris Hero, Bryan Danielson, AJ Styles, LowKi

     

    Specific Questions about your Interest

     

    5. How would you gauge your current interest level in the product? Do you still get butterflies of excitement that make you look forward to upcoming PPVs? Did you ever? Do you watch every televsied wrestling program live, or just a few - and FF'd via DVR at that?

    On a scale of 1-10, with 1 being not watching and 10 being uber-obsessed, I'd put me at a permanent 6.5 or so. I'm really into it, but I don't watch every single show. I do try to make sure I at least get a recap of what happened when I didn't watch, but I don't feel too bad if I miss a show.

     

    6. At what point in wrestling history (if it's not now) would you consider your interest to have been at it's peak?

    When were you compelled to watch every second of televised wrestling AND shell out money on PPVs, get excited about the release of video games, have TV/PPV parties with friends, etc.

    1997-early 2002. The first 4 1/2 years of watching were my peak, really.

     

    7. At what point could you tell your interest was dipping and why do you think this happened, or what specific event(s) triggered the decrease? Was there anything even specific? Just a gradual interest loss of interest? Retirement (or death) of a favourite? A boring title reign on SmackDown in the Summer of 2004?

    ECW was gone, WCW was gone, the InVasion angle was a bomb creatively, and WWE shows were just getting boring. I started getting back into it with TNA and RoH, but never had the money to follow RoH as closely as I wanted to, and TNA took a permanent turn for the worse in late '03 that they've never truly recovered from.

     

    8. Have you ALWAYS stuck with wrestling even during times of low interest, or are there any lengths of time you stopped watching for a period only to come back at a later date?

    I gave up watching for a few months when I got my own place and couldn't afford cable to watch Raw, but that's it.

     

    9. If applicable, at what point did you decide to pack in the wrestling fandom?

    I just started watching again when I got cable, and I try to watch every week. WWE bringing in people other than 'roidfreaks, especially talented ones, certainly helped.

     

    Interesting Questions of a Somewhat Random Nature

     

    10. What style of pro wrestling best resonates with your personal tastes? Has it always been this way, or have your tastes changed over time?

    I guess "extreme" style. I'm not too into the ultraviolent/deathmatch stuff, and I can't get into pure lucha libre for the life of me. Standard punch/kick bores me too, and I have to be in the mood to enjoy a technical showcase. But the "extreme" style (think of the RVD/Lynn series, where all styles of wrestling were blended with an emphasis on a quick pace and excellent highspots/reversal sequences) is one I can get into easily. It's been this way since I first got into ECW, which is why I wish a company like that was still around.

     

    11. Where do you "draw the line" with the whole "suspended disbelief" deal?

    Somewhere in-between TNA marks and WWE Apologists. As long as something remotely reasonable is presented to me, I can accept it. The things I can't get into are complete retconning of characters, like Kane, that go 100% against what was established about them for years prior, especially when it's done poorly and with no actual reasoning. I also hate the Canadian Destroyer unless Petey hits it coming off the top or while running, simply because there's no real momentum going that would make the move come close to even remotely working in real life.

     

    12. Do you attend live events?

    I prefer to watch on TV/DVD/tape, because then I can focus on both what the company is attempting to present their product as, and what it actually is. You can catch things with the aid of a trio of ringside cameras that you can't sitting in the balcony with only one viewpoint, dig? But there's a certain aura to being to a live show, especially a good one.

     

    13. If applicable, what are the best and worst experiences you've had going to a show live?

    Best: Seeing an awesome no-budget TLC match between the Logan Brothers and PRIDE at an NECW event in Framingham (if you YouTube a MV of it, you can actually catch me jumping up in disbelief after a huge spot).

    Worst: Sitting through a fucking atrocious DOA/Los Boricuas tag match in late '97.

     

    14. What are your favourite matches, moments, or events?

    Events: ECW Heat Wave '98, WCW SlamBoree '98, WWE Vengeance '03, WWF WrestleMania 17, ECW Hardcore Heaven 2000, ECW Hardcore Heaven 1999, RoH Death Before Dishonor IV, WCW Great American Bash '00 (whatever, I like the flow of the show), WWF Royal Rumble '98, FMW Anniversary Show '00, WWECW One Night Stand '05, WWF No Way Out '00, ECW Guilty As Charged '99

    Matches: Mike Awesome vs. Masato Tanaka (both HW '98 and N2R '99), Team RoH vs. Team CZW (DBD IV), Briscoes vs. Steenerico (Driven, DBD V night 2, Man Up), almost all of the Dreamer & friends vs. Dudley Boyz brawls (ECW throughout the summer of '98), almost everything involving HHH between Rumble '00 and WM 17, Cruiserweight Battle Royale (SlamBoree '98), Raven/Saturn vs. Benoit/Malenko (Spring Stampede '99)

    Moments: El Ciclope unmasks after winning the Cruiserweight Battle Royale to reveal himself as Dean Malenko (SlamBoree '98), Dreamer avenges Beulah's broken neck by finally beating the Dudley Boyz (Heat Wave '98), Homicide rushes to the aid of RoH to defeat CZW at their own game (DBD IV), Austin captures his first WWF Title (WM 14), Benoit/Guerrero celebrate their holding of the top belts in the industry (WM XX, even if it has been tarnished I still love that one moment), Taz chokes Douglas out for the ECW World title (GAC '99), AJ Styles breaks Jarrett's guitar with an enzugiri and then rolls him up to win the NWA World title for the second time (TNA in early '04), and the biggest one being Foley's retirement walk after losing HIAC to HHH (No Way Out '00).


  3. I just started watching the show, but Leonard on The Big Bang Theory really annoys me. The face that he makes, his voice..it's all just so, well, annoying.

    Agreed. Sheldon and Penny own that show. Howard's not bad, but the Indian one...he can completely go away and the show wouldn't suffer. He's just there to make the cast multi-cultural (although the episode where he took Penny out for dinner as a way of celebrating his getting his article published was funny), and I can't even remember his fucking name.

     

    It's getting to the point where I don't give a fuck about 13 anymore on House. The PI is awesome whenever he pops up, Wilson and House are still great (although there's going to be maybe another season or maybe two before House just becomes flat-out annoying unless he gets a really good character twist going), Cuddy = rule, Kutner and the plastic surgeon aren't bad, and Foreman is near-perfect as the nicer version of House...but 13 kinda jumped the shark after the episode with her and her prior night's date. The hostage ep wasn't bad, but I just don't care for her anymore. She doesn't have the same likeability of Cameron, or even the douchiness of Chase.


  4. My folks watched it in the 80's, and were fans of Jake Roberts and Roddy Piper first and foremost (which influenced me to love them the most out of the 80's WWF roster). I started watching as a little tyke, stopped pretty much for the first half of the 90's (though I still knew who everybody on the WWF roster was, and actually understood the Undertaker/UnderFAKER storyline without watching anything and only hearing it through a friend who watched), and when I got back into it in late '97 my mom watched with me every week. Much more a fan of Nitro than Raw, since it was cleaner and had the WWF 80's guys all over the show.

     

    My dad took me to three live shows: one WWF house show in late '97, not too long after Montreal, and a pair of ECW shows in '99. He would sit and watch ECW with me, but nothing else. He loved The Sandman and Rhino, didn't care for New Jack or most of the undercard, and thought Joel Gertner was hilarious. My mother hated ECW, "too violent," but really liked Mick Foley following KotR '98, and we both were among the very few original Jerichoholics.

     

    Now? Neither of them give two shits about it. My nephew will watch it when it's on, and always has (was great watching a Mike Awesome/Masato Tanaka match with him, and then he wanted to do the "steel chair swordfighting" with his pillows), and my oldest niece used to watch with us until she realized she was a girl. I think my grandfather wants to get all the men in the family together again to go to a WWE show next time they're up (which happened at the aforementioned late '97 house show), but I'm not sure if he's serious or not. Leaning towards the latter, though he does love to just hang out with all of his grandkids and joke around.


  5. Which makes it even worse compared to the absolutely gorgeous airbrushed artwork from Dennis Beauvis in Volume 2, which pointed out how great this stuff could look, and sadly never would ever again.

    Has Beauvais done anything else? I loved his airbrushing. The aliens looked so much more evil, and everything just was made to look so perfectly surreal, which fit the story (which has since been re-titled "Nightmare Asylum" by Dark Horse). Everything I've drawn since I read those books when I was 8 or 9 has been based off of the "cartoonish yet realistic" approach.

    Volume 3 was indeed hurt by a retarded anticlimax, which was also illogical as hell (if Ripley wanted the alien superqueen to gather all the aliens on earth, why the fuck did she shoot it dead?). BTW, if you haven't read them, I'd recommend Steve Perry's novelizations of those Aliens comics.

    Yeah, they're not that bad. I do like how he refuses to say "M41-A Pulse Rifle" and just calls every gun a carbine. It's so annoying it's funny. He did a damned decent job, too, especially with the backstory he did for Spears in Nightmare Asylum.

    Whedon's work is witty, funny, twisty, and poignant, but it's never scary, and the primary goal of any Alien movie should be to scare the shit out of the audience. Jean-Pierre Jeunet was a terrible choice for a director, too; while I'm a pretty huge fan of City of Lost Children and Amelie, this comedic dude should never have been let anywhere near the very serious Alien series.

    Exactly. I'm not a Whedon fan and never have been, but somebody who manages to grab a fanbase by using wit and long story arcs writing a 2-hour movie about beasts from space that rip you apart upon birth and then hunt down others so that more can rip them apart upon birth? Doesn't lend itself to much comedy, especially considering every other entry in the series may have had a few quips here and there, but those were meant to just show the madness setting in amongst those involved.

     

    And Cameron preverring AVP over Alien 3 and Resurrection doesn't surprise me. It's an easier flick to get into, and I think overall better than both because while it's never amazing, it's never downright 100% fucking awful. It's mediocre MTV pop bullshit, but it's not disappointing considering how lame the last three movies of both series were. AVP:R really deserved another half hour of running time, maybe even another hour, because the overall script, if left to the final hands of a worthy writer that could take the work of the Brothers Strauss and morph it into something better, wasn't that bad at all. Any news on the alleged third one, even if direct-to-DVD?


  6. IIRC, the doctor who gave him the test said he was just over the line. So he's not a helmet, and he's a little bit smarter than Forrest Gump, but he's pretty below average in terms of actual intelligence.

     

    Another good example is Randy Marsh. I don't even think he was outed as Stan's father until the second season or so, because in his first appearance he's just a geologist when the volcano erupts and Scuzzibut appears, and I don't remember him much from the first season at all. But he went from the stereotypical mid-westerner - AKA Joe Six-Pack - to a full-on retard, while all of the boys got much smarter than they really have any right to be at the age of 9.


  7. Re: Amos doing "Raining Blood"

    Allegedly, and I can't remember if I read this in an interview with her or in a magazine article either in Metal Edge or Pit or whatever back when she did it, but the reason she chose that was because she felt so strongly about the abuse and treatment of women in the Middle East that she wanted a giant vagina to open up in the sky and rain menstrual blood all over that area of the world.

     

    ...I'm guessing she missed the point of the song...


  8. Oh man Alien Vs Predator...now that was a sack of shit. I love Alien (well the first two anyways) and I love The Predator so I figured it couldn't be too bad but man was I wrong. I was (still sort of am) mildly tempted to see the sequel but fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

     

    The reason I finally got around to seeing the movies was because of AVP:R. When it premiered on "Super Channel" here, they did an Predator / Aliens marathon (on their HD channel to boot) so I just DVR'd the whole thing.

     

    I would almost say I enjoyed Resurrection over 3, solely because of Ron Perlman's performance.

     

    I read somewhere (probably wikipedia) that Ridley Scott consider the original AVP the 3rd best movie in the series.

    I'd actually consider AVP:R to be the 3rd best in the series, if only because of all of the little nods to both the comics and the first two movies that it made. The Predator wasn't a complete puss (like 2 of the 3 in the first AVP were), and the Aliens were BRUTAL. Plus, the Predalien from the AVP comics was involved in it, although not as good as it was presented in the books.

     

    Resurrection could've been so much better had Whedon's script (IIRC, he's the one who wrote it) been a little more...adult-oriented. If you take out the cursing? It's a PG-13/TV-14 teen sci-fi/action drama. I'll agree with you, Venk, that Perlman is awesome in it, and I'd even go so far as to say the cast itself almost makes the movie worth watching. Michael Wincott's always been very underrated (so sad that his most prominent role was as Top Dollar in The Crow), Perlman is great, Weaver is already great, Brad Dourif is a horror genre fave, and Ryder still had some appeal at the time. But...Whedon's script...gah. And the movie just looks...almost too pretty. Say what you will about Alien 3, but it at least looked like an Alien movie, with everything very gritty and industrial in appearance, very confined. But Resurrection was very colorful. Nobody can top Cameron or Scott, though. Cameron understood how to increase the action and the drama while still maintaining a solid horror element, and Scott was perfect at the dark and claustrophobic feel. I really wish A3 and A:R were better, because then AVP wouldn't have been made for a little while longer, preferably until Anderson was no longer around to do it.

     

    But yeah: Verheiden should've written Alien 3. Or maybe use that original draft of the script that didn't involve Ripley until near the end. I forget where I read it, but it added something new to the Alien mythos, one where a facehugger, if dead, could release a spore that would turn anybody who breathed it in into an Alien. Maybe a studio will pick that script up, do a re-write, and make it into its own flick, because THAT is a great idea.


  9. Closest I can come to doom is the slower Acid Bath songs, Type O Negative, early Theatre of Tragedy, Sentenced, and late Moonspell. The holiday season doesn't really make me change my music, honestly. I'm still mostly about The Crown and God Dethroned at the moment, but I'm sure that'll pass when I find a new thrash band to blow my load over.

     

    But before I go, everybody should check out the greatest black metal song/video in history.


  10. December 19th has Gwar, Kingdom of Sorrow, and Toxic Holocaust back up here at Lupo's/The Strand in Providence, RI.

     

    PRO's:

    -GWAR

    -TOXIC HOLOCAUST

    -Best Gwar show I've ever been to, and I've seen them every time but one when they're up here since the summer of '06 (which is a surprising 5 times).

    -Kingdom of Sorrow combined the few things I like about both Hatebreed and Crowbar into one band.

    -The pit will be more insane than it was at Rock and Shock, since there will be less casual Gwar fans and more diehards.

     

    CON's:

    -Providence is a good 45-minute drive, and parking is always a bitch to find.

    -December 19th is going to be FREEZING, and nobody wears hoodies at a Gwar show.

    -Leaving we'll be covered in food coloring dyed water, and thus will be freezing even more than we would normally.

    -Every time I go to a show at Lupo's/The Strand, there's always some complete fucking asshole in the parking lot who just won't move even when there's plenty of room to go.

     

    Needless to say, the pro's definitely outweigh the con's. It's fucking GWAR.


  11. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: they should've gotten Mark Verheiden to write the script. He penned the first three books of the Dark Horse Comics Aliens series, which focused on Hicks and Newt some 10-15 years after the events of Aliens and Weyland Yutani's second attempt at capturing the xenomorphs, resulting in the creatures taking over Earth (Book 1). At the start of Book 2, Hicks, Newt, and android soldier Butler (who didn't know he was an android until near the end of Book 1) escape Earth on a cargo vessel bound for an unknown planet, which is run by Colonel Spears. The cargo? Impregnated human hosts in hypersleep. Well, the hypersleep got fucked, and the aliens get out, and Hicks and Newt have to eliminate them, but Spears has other plans: he's got a pair of entire hives he's using to breed aliens in an attempt to train them and use them to take back Earth.

     

    That goes to shit, of course, and Hicks and Newt escape Spears' base on an uncharted planet to dock at Gateway Station (where Ripley met Burke in Aliens). Who do they meet again? Ripley. Turns out that she was awoken out of hypersleep during the Sulaco's return to Earth by ANOTHER Weyland Yutani military team, and she, along with two other soldiers on the 10-man team, were the only survivors. Ripley and Newt have been having dreams: dreams of the Alien Queen Mother, the original Alien Queen on the Alien Homeworld. The mission then becomes to go there, kidnap her, bring her to Earth to gather ALL of the Aliens from around the planet...and nuke the fuck out of them, taking back the planet. Different shit happens, of course, but the end DOES see Ripley, Newt, and Hicks succeed. Earth War, the conclusion (which starts with Ripley and Newt arguing about why Ripley left her and Hicks), is the weakest in the series, just because there's so much going on and it's impossible to really follow what's going on. That, and the ending is very anti-climactic.

     

    ...yeah...I'm a fanboy...


  12. I'm a fucking toolbag, so I still e-fed. I've actually used, IMO, some pretty kick-ass theme music for all of the guys I've used, and I actually remember all of them too.

     

    Cliff Young

    Metallica - "The Four Horsemen"

    Megadeth - "Symphony of Destruction"

    Iron Maiden - "The Wicker Man"

    Black Label Society - "We Live No More"

     

    Jesse White

    Guano Apes - "Open Your Eyes"

    Stuck Mojo - "Rising"

    Toxic Narcotic - "People Suck"

     

    Kage White/El Tiburon

    Gwar - "A Short History of the End of the World"

     

    Corey Lazarus

    Amen - "Coma America"

    Shadows Fall - "The First Noble Truth"

    Godhead - "The Reckoning"

    Slayer - "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida"

    White Zombie - "Feed the Gods"

    Metallica - "The Ecstasy of Gold"

    The Crown - "Introduction: House of Hades/Crowned in Terror"

     

    Malcolm West

    Gang Starr - "1/2 & 1/2"

    Dr. Dre and Ice Cube - "Natural Born Killaz"

    WC and the Maad Circle f/ Ice Cube - "West Up"

     

    Andrew Crow

    White Zombie - "I, Zombie"

    The Misfits - "Descending Angel"

     

    BobB

    Kid Rock - "Born 2 B a Hick"

     

    But I have to say that, were I to have one, I'd be using Stormtroopers of Death's "March of the S.O.D.," preferably a remix to loop it over and over so I can possibly take more than a minute to get to the ring.


  13. I'd say they're on pretty even grounds, as far as overall quality goes. I prefer Paegan, if only for "13 Fingers" and "Venus Blue." I know Agent prefers Kite due to its variety (which I can't argue with, as there is a much wider variety of songs on Kite than on Paegan), so it's really up to your personal preference.

     

    I found a Demolition Hammer anthology last Friday. It has all 3 LPs on it - Tortured Existence, Epidemic of Violence, and Time Bomb - with Epidemic split halfway between the first and second disc, and the billfold has an introduction by John Kevill (Warbringer) and Marco Barbieri (Century Media Records consultant). It's still amazing the drop-off in quality between Epidemic of Violence and Time Bomb, but hot damn those first two are some great, Grade A+ thrash.

    51253_216.jpg

    Highly recommended.

     

    Anybody else gearing up for Cannibal Corpse's new album, Evisceration Plague, in February?


  14. Matt "M-Dogg 20" Cross was the star of those "Best of Backyard Wrestling" tapes from earlier in the decade. He and friend Josh Prohibition had a small buzz for them a few years ago, because they were the first two from those tapes to actually get trained and go pro, and they both had some decent matches in CZW and XPW. Cross now does a lot of RoH work, but, to my knowledge, Prohibition is still in small indies doing hardcore brawls and stuff.

×